On the present occasion, however, all he was aiming at, his gentleness of demeanour notwithstanding, was a preface to a proper system of educating or training the bodies of children. For after her answer he went on to say, "I am delighted to hear you say so. If we had children, I see you would be continually washing them, and with cold water, too, over their whole bodies, and this would invigorate them and make them strong and hardy, since, as you say, it produces warmth." Her only answer to this was to hold her hands aloft, folded for victory, like the biblical prophet--for, in her eyes, a cold bathing of children was a Herodian blood-bath. Firmian then developed with much greater clearness his invigorating system of upbringing, while more and more strenuously strove his wife against it, with all her feathers ruffled, till by dint of able exposition on both sides of the respective masculine and feminine systems of rearing, they had nearly reached a point where they would have clashed together, like a couple of summer thunderclouds, had not he dispelled these by firing the following shot: "Good heavens! have _we_ any children? Why should we make fools of ourselves in this way about the matter?" "I was speaking of other people's children," was Lenette's reply. Consequently, as I said above, war did _not_ break out, but, on the other hand, the morning of the Sabbath of peace brake in, and with it came the guests who were bent upon possessing themselves of (and eating) the warm and divided heart, or pig, of the Babylonish harlot, or Cardinal Protector. It seemed, in fact, as if some happy star of the wise men of the East must be standing in the heavens above this houseful of recipients of out-door relief, for there had, by good luck, been a gale of wind on the previous Friday which had blown down some half of the Government forest and strewn the path to Advent, for the poor, so grandly with branches (and the trees attached) that the entire staff of forest officials could not hinder the ingathering of such a vintage. For many a long year the Morbitzer's house hadn't boasted anything approaching to such a stock of timber, part of it purchased, part adroitly collected.